Martine Gutierrez, "Indigenous Woman"
“This is not a magazine about fashion, lifestyle, or celebrity. Indigenous Woman is an independent art publication dedicated to the celebration of Mayan Indian heritage, the navigation of contemporary indigeneity, and the ever-evolving self-image. It is a vision, an overture, a provocation.”
In her jaw dropping 146 page tour de force art publication “Indigenous Women”, Martine Gutierrez has triumphed her ideologies around the proposed fluidity of relationships, and investigates the authenticity of the societal roles that have been impressed on relationships, as defined by gender. The book masquerades as a glossy high fashion magazine, oozing over with saturation and highly stylized photos, with Martine as the star of each and every one. What should have taken the full roster of a modeling agency, is reimagined by Martine alone as she steps into each character of the flashy, dramatized, and yet familiar scenes, challenging the viewer to think about how they have been conditioned to perceive what is genuine, real, and authentic. Martine affirms that her work is a direct manifestation of the many facets of her own complex identity, stating that “the whole magazine is real in a fantastical and reimagined way. It is taking elements of my life and elements of my identity that are confusing and hard for even me to chew on, and attempting to share them”. The work has impeccable detail and massive of scope of content, clutching the viewer, dazzling them, and begging them to question the authenticity not just of these characters, but of all known roles impressed on gender, ethnicity, and sexuality.
Martine is a Brooklyn based performance artist, whose art explores the intersections of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity as they pervade her human experiences. The wildly impressive performer works under complete autonomy, meaning all photography, modeling, styling, hair, makeup, lighting, graphic design, and product design are executed by her alone. She uses costume, photography, and video to create elaborate narrative scenes that combine pop culture, mannequins, and self-portraiture to explore the ways in which identity, like art, is both a social construction and an authentic expression of self. Integral in her work is the thoughtful participation of the viewer, as she aims to set the scene for a self reflective discourse, asking them to reimagine their own perceptions of sex, gender, and social groups. Martine states that she is “not interested in giving answers to people”, but would rather ignite a process within the viewer to consider their own projections on her work. She is interested in what a viewer accepts or rejects as authentic, and seeks to push the notion, expanding the viewers ideas of what is possible and what is genuine, to break down the rigid socially constructed fabricated dichotomies like 'male' vs. 'female', 'gay' vs. 'straight'. She affirms the unnecessity of these constructs and she states “our interpretation of these constructs is subjective and not immutable. Reality, like gender, is ambiguous because it exists fluidly.”
In “Indigenous Women”, each of the pieces in the publication in some way explore the exaggeration of feminine constructions in the media. Martine utilizes highly coded visual symbols and language in her work, and by personating familiar female types, she illuminates the supremely fabricated nature of such idols of femininity, and exposes the lack of authenticity of these characters and how they represent gender, ethnicity, and love. The publication includes a vast spectrum of fashion editorials, beauty features with titles such as Queer Rage, Masking, Demons, and faux product advertisements like Blue Lagoon Morisco sunless bronzer, paired with the tagline “Brown is Beautiful.” Martine subverts the traditional spectacle of the white male gaze in efforts to impactfully and seductively raise questions about inclusivity, cultural appropriation, and insatiable consumerism. Some of the works in the publication have more obvious critical messages, such as a “White Wash” soap ad, and a perfume ad for “Del’ Estrogen”. Others prove more subtly how thoughtful Martine is in her critics of modern obsessions with consumerism and beauty practices. In the article/series called “Masking” Martine delves deeper into the visual cues of makeup and the the symbolism of the face when defining a person by their gender. She explores the use of fruits and vegetables as skin care products, investigating how people conclude identity as how a person is dressed or made up, and how these factors of identity are deeply embedded in binary gender assumptions. Through “Masking” Martine seeks to create identity through alien forms, alluding to the inherent strangeness that comes from trying to define people in two categories, male and female, when there are so many variations of form in how a person may appear. “Masking” for Martine, allows her to reiterate the dehumanizing nature of separating humans into binary gender categories. When asked about the importance of moving beyond the binary, Martine responded, “We look at things as black and white when there’s so much grey. Even people that think they’re in the black or in the white—they have a foot in the grey. We all do. It’s impossible not to.” In “Indigenous Women” Martine seeks to marry the traditional to the contemporary, the native to the post-colonial, and the marginalized to the mainstream in the pursuit of genuine selfhood, revealing cultural inequities along the way.
Martine parallels her career long investigation of gender roles, with a contemplative celebration of her Mayan Indian heritage, reflecting on her ancestry’s affects on her ever-evolving self-image as she navigates contemporary indigeneity. Martine states that her perspective is “Amerindigenous” and shares that the stereotypes imposed on her are the origin of her questioning, as she inquires what merit these socially constructed labels and iconographies truly have over her. Martine’s veracity has never thrived in singularity, not in regard to gender, ethnicity, or sexuality. In “Indigenous Women” Martine transforms her physical environment and her devised self, to relentlessly investigate the grey areas around socially constructed identities, both personal and collective. In this work she plunders the socially constructed parameters of identity and reveals the true ambiguity of being. She exposes the idea of being “genuine” as a possibility for all that fall outside of social constructs, and in the grey area of how we know ourselves to be true. Reminding us that it is our perceptions that define what we feel is genuine about ourselves, she concludes, “My truth thrives in the gray area, but society doesn't yet allow an open consciousness to celebrate ambiguity, and we are told who we should be. But it's up to you to consider everything and be open, otherwise how will you know if your life is real or just a reenactment?” Martine has a powerful, articulate voice of the genuine experience of living outside of the norm. She encourages us to understand each other outside of what we have been told to expect from one another, and rather advocates a mutual understanding that has the power the change the world.
Bibliography
Miss Rosen. “A Trans Latinx Artist's Incredible High-Fashion Self-Portraits.” Vice News, Sep 21 2018. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kvaey/martine-gutierrez-trans-latinx-artist-indigenous-fashion-photography.
Gutierrez, Martine. “Letter From The Editor”, Indigenous Women. Ryan Lee Gallery, 2018.
Martine Gutierrez. “About The Artist.” Last Accessed December 14, 2018. http://www.martinegutierrez.com/about-the-artist1.html#.
